But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
Ah... THERE's the vegan sancimony in full, fatuous flower.
Tell you what, City Boy, get yourself a pet cow that's been impregnated, but has lost its calf. See how grateful it is that you choose, in your ethically superior bubble, to let it go unmilked.
There, now you can say you've learned something today.
No, instead you have to lift all the (non-existent) processing equipment instead. Are you under the impression that a steel mill is somehow not very heavy? Of course none of this technology is being developed because even if you did get it into orbit, you need a product to return to earth to make the financing possible.
Man, do you think small.
First off, judging from the composition of meteors found here on Earth, iron asteroids should mostly be composed of nickel-iron alloys. The percentage of nickel in the two most common components, kamacite and taenite, is MUCH higher than that found in most steel manufactured on Earth. Meteoric iron is highly corrosion-resistant and extremely durable, and it needs NO smelting to turn it into construction materials - it's pure enough to build stuff with straight from the sky.
It WILL need to be MELTED, so that it can be formed into girders, sheets, pipes, and so on, but that's actually trivial. The Earth/Moon orbit receives more than enough sunlight to use as a heat source. Simple parabolic mirrors made out of aluminized Mylar will do the trick. Yes, presses, rolling mills, stampers, and crucibles designed to work in microgravity environments will be necessary, but the hardest part of the task is the Bessemer process - and that's a skippable step.
As for needing to deliver a product to Earth to make a profit - nonsense! Why send it to Earth, which already has lots and lots of iron, when you can use it in space to construct stuff like an orbital shipyard and drydock facility, true SPACE ships (i.e. - ships designed to operate only in space, and never to touch down on a planetary surface at all), orbital habitats, factories, and labs, and so on? How much do you think Planetary Resources can charge for building a spacecraft capable of reaching Mars?
Finally, everyone in this discussion seems to have fastened onto NASA's 500-ton asteroid thought experiment as the size of the rock PR will attempt to lasso. I think you're all thinking too small, again. If they can capture a 500-ton asteroid, why can't they grab a 5,000-ton asteroid? It'd take a little longer to coax it into a useful orbit, but the same technology that would allow capture of a 500-tonner should be scalable to one 10X that size - and that would provide a helluva lot more raw material for in-space construction purposes.
PR is a MAJOR braintrust with some extremely big bucks behind it. I suspect they've thought this through a lot better than you or I have.
Regardless, we'll find out exactly what they're proposing to do on Tuesday.
I have CFLs that date back to the 90s and still work, but newer Philips and GE CFLs that only last 6 months. The problem is in the bulb not the wires.....
My experience with Philips CFLs has been similarly dismal. OTOH, I've used plenty of Genuine Noname CFLs that lasted like the Energizer Bunny.
OP here. If you read Borenstein's AP article, you'd know that the French researchers chose to use English words, because, in the words of Jonathan Grainger, the lead researcher, "English is the international language of science."
Grainger did not express and opinion on whether that rationale makes sense to the baboons.
Well I have never listened to a single opera. I respect the dedication to improving a skill and professionals who strive to perfect a skill. And I understand that to be a good singer you need to have control of your voice.
And yet you cite opera singing as somehow artistically superior to rock vocals.
Are you familiar with the logical error known as "appeal to authority"? Because you just indulged in it.
As for your contention that:
There is no comparison to the modern day rock and role singer (some smuck of the street who is willing to scream until he vomits blood) and a professionally trained opera singer who can actually control his voice.
I recommend you hunt up the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar, and listen closely to "Gethsemane". The guy singing it is Ian Gillian, the original lead singer of Deep Purple, and thus one of the originators (with Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin) of hard rock/heavy metal vocals. Hands down, it is the premiere interpretation of the part. His voice soars, pleads, agonizes, and, yes, at times screams. And the emotional impact is devastating. I defy you to criticize it - it is simply one of the best rock vocal performances ever recorded.
Better yet, listen to Murray Head's performance as Judas, singing "Superstar (I Only Want To Know)". Holy freakin' shit, Batman!
There is no comparison to the modern day rock and role singer (some smuck of the street who is willing to scream until he vomits blood) and a professionally trained opera singer who can actually control his voice.
Which is to say that you love opera, and rock music is not opera.
My wife just received a come-on letter from AT&T that said she had been "choosen to receive" an "Android smartphone with NO CONTRACT and FREE SHIPPING!"
Of course, the fact that this Android smartphone she had been "chosen to receive" would cost her $129.99, plus tax, and that she'd have to maintain a credit balance in her AT&T account in order to actually USE this pretty dumb excuse for a smartphone AS a smartphone. (No data features for pay-as-you-go customers, naturally.)
It's a lousy, no-win situation to find ourselves stuck in
Prompting Hatta to respond:
We're not stuck in it. Obama is choosing to prolong it. There's no reason to believe any occupying force can ever civilize Afghanistan. Why do you think Obama can succeed where the Soviets, the British, even Alexander the Great failed?
Actually, contrary to popular opinion, Alexander mostly succeeded.
He did so by marrying Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes, the most powerful of the Bactrian warlords, thus linking what is now Afghanistan to his empire by the promise that the heirs to his throne would be half-Bactrian. His marriage took place after the successful siege of the Sogdian Rock, the previously-impregnable fortress of the rebel Persian warlord Ariamazes, where Roxana and her mother had taken refuge. Essentially, his strategy was, "See? I can easily conquer even your strongest redoubts. Come, let us be brothers." He also settled colonists in what is now the Northwest Territories of Pakistan to provide the "civilizing" influence of Hellenistic culture, and their descendents still live there today as the Kalash tribe.
Although the area became independent again after Alexander's death, it was one of the few parts of his empire that never revolted against his rule during his lifetime (some of the disgruntled colonists - mostly disabled veterans of his army - did abandon their posts when rumors of his death swept the empire during his crossing of the Gedrosian desert, but they were Greeks and Macedonians, not Bactrians, and were punished as mutineers).
Alexander succeeded where the Brits and the Soviets failed, because he first demonstrated his overwhelming military superiority, and then employed his father's favorite diplomatic strategy of binding the most prominent regional strongman to him by marriage.
Obama doesn't have that option. Nonetheless, we have obligations to the residents of Kabul, if nothing else, who will be massacred by the Taliban, should they take over. Every educator, every healthworker, every policeman and Afghan Army member, every non-Sunni, will be slaughtered by the Taliban immediately after they gain control. And it is our presence that coaxed those folks into revealing themselves. I think we owe them a debt of protection for their courage - but we have to be smarter about it than we have been. It may even be necessary to offer them sanctuary in the West in order to meet our obligation to them - but, if we simply leave them to the mercy of the Taliban, we will have failed in a moral sense even more profoundly than the Soviets failed in a military one.
And I disagree that our failure was always inevitable. We COULD have built Afghanistan into an actual, functional nation-state (as opposed to the collection of semi-autonomous warlord fiefdoms which it has been since the Soviet invasion), if we had taken up the burden of nation-building to which our September 2001 invasion obligated us. That we did not is all the responsibility of Bush and Cheney. Again, Obama is merely stuck with trying to salvage as much as possible from the utter SNAFU of the previous administration.
It increasingly seems that no one is winning from this war.
prompting Hatta to respond:
Increasingly? It was obvious from the start that this was a fool's errand. Afghanistan isn't called the graveyard of empires for no reason.
Actually, it wasn't obvious at all. The U.S. invasion was welcomed by the majority of Afghans, who were pretty sick of the Taliban's reign of terror. The problem is that the Bush administration, instead of proceeding with the arduous and expensive task of nation-building that would have ensured the Taliban's permanent defeat, opted to turn its attention to invading Iraq. As a result, conditions for the average Afghan did not improve AT ALL under the American occupation, while Pakistan, our nominal ally in the "war on terror", sheltered, trained, equipped, and encouraged the Afghan Taliban to resume guerilla war against the American/NATO occupiers. As that conflict began generating more and more collateral damage, the tide of Afghan opinion turned more and more against the occupying troops, to the point that, today, our forces are nearly as hated as the Soviets were - and the Taliban are once again seen as saviors.
Obama inherited the Afghan quagmire from the Bush administration - which was responsible for causing it. Should he be persuaded immediately to withdraw all U.S. troops, not only would the Taliban instantly re-take control of Afghanistan, they would wreak horrific retribution against the most westernized sectors of Afghani society (i.e. - the most civilized and tolerant sectors), and plunge the country back into the 14th century hellhole it was before we invaded it in 2001.
And, not at all incidentally, make it once again a haven for international terrorism, a la September 2001.
It's a lousy, no-win situation to find ourselves stuck in, but the blame belongs with George W. Bush, not Barack Obama. As with the economy, Obama is merely the janitor, stuck with cleaning up after another one of the frat boy's "Wild Thing" parties.
Access the NY Times article without having to register with this link.
The article is, as is typical of the Times, full of detail about the story in question. Some salient points:
Norman Spinrad - who wrote the original script in question - requested Gene Roddenberry not to make the episode, after the comedy he wrote was re-written into what he called "a very unfunny comedy" by Gene L. Coon (TOS producer), and Roddenberry complied with his wishes.
Spinrad himself comments on this sequence of events on his blog
ST Phase II has already produced an episode based on an unused script from the ST:TNG era called "Blood and Fire" by David "The Trouble with Tribbles" Gerrold (which Gerrold himself directed) without any dissent from CBS.
The Star Trek script is called "He Walked Among Us". It should not be confused, however, with Spinrad's non-ST science fiction novel of the same name, which is available in RTF format as shareware.
Spinrad, who's 71 now, was an enfant terrible of SF back in the 1960's. His novels "Bug Jack Barron" and "The Men in the Jungle" broke what at the time was new ground (the former for its use of vulgarity, the latter for its subject matter). He's been one of the most consistently interesting SF writers ever since, and I can't recommend his work highly enough.
Eliminating Bruce Schneier from the witness list means they really do NOT want any experts in front of the committee as that could bring up troubling "FACTS".
And this is surprising to you in what way?
This is a House committee, thus Republican-dominated, and Republicans have been pushing the FEAR button since... well... at least the Nixon administration. And especially so since 9/11 - which, you will recall, is what brought us the TSA in the first place.
Darrell Issa isn't interested in facts. He's interested in politics. People are becoming increasingly pissed at the thuggery of the TSA, so he's putting on hearings to show voters he's "concerned". He really isn't concerned, however. He just wants free publicity for the benefit of voters back home in Southern California. Like all members of the House, he's up for election again this year, and this circus is merely a mechanism to get his name and face in the news without him having to spend campaign funds. There will be no meaningful reforms as a result of his showboating, but the guy who made his fortune selling those damned obnoxious car alarms (that was Issa's own voice braying, "Stand away from the car!" on the "classic" Viper "warn away" system) that drive city dwellers to the brink of violence will wind up re-elected this November, and I guarantee you his campaign literature will trumpet how he "took on the TSA" over strip-searching grandmothers and babies.
Wayne Holder and I did it 27 years ago for the Apple II...bruce..
I played that on the Atari ST. It was fun. You had to maintain and upgrade your ship, while building up your cash by trading, all the while gathering the colonists for a new world that your inheritance depended on you setting up (thus: Sundog: Frozen Legacy)
These Belgian swine aren't legally permitted to charge children to BORROW these same books from the library and read them THEMSELVES, but they somehow have decided that they have the right to charge THE LIBRARY, if an adult reads them ALOUD to the same children?
In response to which kdmetter pled:
Belgian swine here. Please don't judge all my people by the actions of the lowest scum in the country ( SABAM ).
I called them "Belgian swine" merely to distinguish them from the American, British, Swedish, etc., etc. varieties.
Not all Belgians are swine - just as not all swine are Belgian - but THESE particular swine ARE Belgian.
(And PLEASE don't accuse me of waffling on this issue!)
These Belgian swine aren't legally permitted to charge children to BORROW these same books from the library and read them THEMSELVES, but they somehow have decided that they have the right to charge THE LIBRARY, if an adult reads them ALOUD to the same children?
Apparently it takes a Belgian lintellectual property awyer to dumb down a village...
The first half is a defense attorney, the second half is a cop. Both speakers make it very clear -- do not talk to police without a lawyer present. Some will try to screw you to boost their numbers, others will screw you by accident, but either way you get screwed. Cops have a very specific job to do, and that job does not involve looking out for your personal best interests. Talk to a lawyer instead - they are legally required to do what's best for you.
Mod this WAY up. The video in question is 48 minutes long, and wildly entertaining throughout. Also, eye-opening.
The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester (won the first Hugo)
The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester (his best short novel - it should have won the Hugo)
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny (his first Hugo-winning novel - and his best. You simply can't name a better science fiction novel.)
Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones - Samuel R. Delany (this short novel won both the Hugo and the Nebula - it's Delany's very best story, period)
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein (his third best novel Hugo and his best book)
Tau Zero - Poul Anderson (expanded from "To Outlive Eternity" in Galaxy, it won the Hugo in 1971 - and is still one of the best hard-science fiction novels of the era)
Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner (won the best novel Hugo in 1969 - by a very large majority vote of the St. Louiscon membership),/li>
Note: the opinions expressed are my own - but most of the novels listed above won Hugos, and they all deserved them.
And, of course, this list could go on. And on. And ON...
The other "father of space opera' whom nobody remembers - and I mean, at all - these days is Edmond Hamilton. Six of his books are available through Project Gutenberg. Really terrific stuff.
Also, E. E. Smith's original "Skylark of Space" novel was begun in 1915, and finally completed in 1920. It wasn't published until 1927, when it was serialized in three parts in Amazing Stories. That's pretty much the definitive beginning of space opera as a genre. The final Skylark novel - "Skylark Duquesne" - was serialized in four parts in Worlds of If in 1965. I remember very well what an amazing experience reading that serialization was for me, at the age of 12.
Smith actually died in late August, 1965, just as the "Skylark Duquesne" serialization was ending (If was actually distributed the month prior to its nominal month of publication). It was heartbreaking to read of his passing just as "Skylark Duquesne" - the capstone of a series that lasted nearly 40 years - reached publication.
Voting is tougher. In the early days of the USA, only a small minority could vote. You had to be white, male, and you had to own land at a time when most people didn't. Obviously the requirement that voters be white was plain racism, though at the time the same racism meant only whites would be educated. The exclusion of women meant that what we now call "big government" proposals had less support automatically (this has been proven and I don't care how anyone feels about facts - women tend to look for security from an external source and the government is only too happy to offer it). The exclusion of anyone who didn't own land tended to mean the voters were educated and prosperous enough that they could devote time to being active in politics.
Oh and the fact that Senators were appointed by the states to represent the states meant you had one part of the legislature that didn't have to run campaigns, didn't have to worry about the way the wind was blowing, and could actually vote their conscience. Changing that was a bad idea. It was an important check against the soundbite-driven (well really headline-driven, back then) world we know today.
Actually, I've been reading The Gilded Age recently. In it, Twain and Warner keep politics in the age of buccaneer capital squarely in their sights. One of the supporting characters is Senator Dilworthy, who is up for re-election. He goes back to his home state of Missouri to campaign for reelection in the state legislature, and winds up losing in a landslide, when his widespread bribery of legislators is exposed.
It's fiction, not history, but it's indicative of at least one of the problems with having Senators elected by state legislatures, rather than by direct vote of the people - it's a lot easier to bribe a few dozen than an entire electorate.
Twain and Warner likewise rip the lid off of Washington politics of the time, when Dilworthy and his allies use bribery, coercion, and blackmail to ram through a bill to purchase 1200 acres of Tennessee land - ostensibly to benefit "the Negro", but actually for the benefit of a poor, but well-connected Missouri family, and the network of lobbyists, politicians, and infuence-makers who will "administer" the fund created by the measure.
The book is a lot of fun - and quite enlightening. Politics, it seems, is ever the same. The details change, the corruption remains consistent.
What I'd like to see is some kind of very tough civics test as a requirement for voting. It should be as openly and transparently administered as possible, so that anyone who wants to study and learn could pass it but very few who didn't care to study would stand a chance. In addition, anyone currently receiving some form of "entitlement" should not get to vote because what they're going to vote for is not difficult to guess and this situation is too exploitable and too dangerous for our long-term survival. The last thing I would change is that all campaigns be publically funded, each candidate gets a very generous amount, and any other "contributions" are treasonous bribery resulting in a death penalty for the candidate and 20 years in prison for the one "contributing" the money.
With something like that, we could have a nation again.
Mmm... the civics test I could see. It would ensure an at least nominally informed electorate. Forbidding anyone who receives any kind of "entitlement" is a whole other issue. In fact, I'm really glad you put the term in quotes, because I don't think you've thought that restriction through.
And I mean I don't think you've thought it through at all.
For instance, your proposal - if it were implemented across the board - would mean that no one who receives Social Security or Medicare benefits could vote. Is that what you had in mind? Because it's senior citizens who have the most experience with the consequences of voting, as well as the leisure time necessa
The Roman empire was based on slavery to it's very roots. They conquered to gain slaves to do work for them. When that cycle stopped is when Rome started to collapse.
All advanced (i.e. - "city-building") ancient civilizations were based on slavery (or serfdom, as in the Egyptian fellahin). Rome was not at all unique in that regard. However, Rome did not conquer to gain slaves, per se. In fact, the goals of Roman conquest evolved over time. Initially (which is to say, "during the early Republic"), the goals were to preserve territorial integrity, and to create buffer zones against potential invaders. Later, the goal changed to providing sources of tribute in the form of taxes. An occasional fresh source of slaves, to be sure, was a desirable and welcome bonus, but the primary attraction was the ongoing source of revenue new conquests created.
When the Roman Empire exceeded its maximum governable size, and was forced to divide itself in two, those new sources of revenue were taken out of the equation. The end came as Roman currency became progressively debased, causing rampant inflation, and a currency collapse that, in turn, made it increasingly difficult to finance the basis of Roman power - its standing armies. By the time Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the armies that allowed Rome to project power had all but disappeared. When Odoacer claimed the Western Principate in 476 - because no meaningful Roman military machine remained - Rome then altogether ceased to matter as a regional power.
First of all the actual article sucks - it contains no link to the actual published research, nor does it even bother to identify the journal in which the study was published. Christine Hsu, the article's author, contradicts herself on whether Austria or Italy has the lowest female BMI:
Of all the 17 European countries studied, women in Austria were had the lowest average body mass index, a measurement of weight compared to height, at 23.67, which was lower than the European average of 25. Italy had the lowest average BMI for young women at 21.40.
And, predictably, she makes NO mention of the actual survey's contents or methodology, beyond stating how many participants there were. So, we have no way of telling how those participants were selected, what questions they were asked, what the margin of error was calculated to be, and so on.
But the biggest fraud of all, is the conclusion that, based on one survey, European governments are somehow justified in dictating which models advertisers may or may not employ. That's not even a slippery slope - it's a precipice that makes the Matterhorn look like a Dutch tulip field.
Crappy reporting on execrable science. Nothing to see here...
Slashdot Mirror
Nrrqshrr noted:
I didn't RTFA, but DEUS sounds like the perfect name for this project.
In fact, running on the Curie supercomputer makes it a DEUS ex machina!
Some anonymous coward blathered:
But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
Ah ... THERE's the vegan sancimony in full, fatuous flower.
Tell you what, City Boy, get yourself a pet cow that's been impregnated, but has lost its calf. See how grateful it is that you choose, in your ethically superior bubble, to let it go unmilked.
There, now you can say you've learned something today.
And you can claim that your shit doesn't stink.
It doesn't make either thing true.
sjbe sneered:
No, instead you have to lift all the (non-existent) processing equipment instead. Are you under the impression that a steel mill is somehow not very heavy? Of course none of this technology is being developed because even if you did get it into orbit, you need a product to return to earth to make the financing possible.
Man, do you think small.
First off, judging from the composition of meteors found here on Earth, iron asteroids should mostly be composed of nickel-iron alloys. The percentage of nickel in the two most common components, kamacite and taenite, is MUCH higher than that found in most steel manufactured on Earth. Meteoric iron is highly corrosion-resistant and extremely durable, and it needs NO smelting to turn it into construction materials - it's pure enough to build stuff with straight from the sky.
It WILL need to be MELTED, so that it can be formed into girders, sheets, pipes, and so on, but that's actually trivial. The Earth/Moon orbit receives more than enough sunlight to use as a heat source. Simple parabolic mirrors made out of aluminized Mylar will do the trick. Yes, presses, rolling mills, stampers, and crucibles designed to work in microgravity environments will be necessary, but the hardest part of the task is the Bessemer process - and that's a skippable step.
As for needing to deliver a product to Earth to make a profit - nonsense! Why send it to Earth, which already has lots and lots of iron, when you can use it in space to construct stuff like an orbital shipyard and drydock facility, true SPACE ships (i.e. - ships designed to operate only in space, and never to touch down on a planetary surface at all), orbital habitats, factories, and labs, and so on? How much do you think Planetary Resources can charge for building a spacecraft capable of reaching Mars?
Finally, everyone in this discussion seems to have fastened onto NASA's 500-ton asteroid thought experiment as the size of the rock PR will attempt to lasso. I think you're all thinking too small, again. If they can capture a 500-ton asteroid, why can't they grab a 5,000-ton asteroid? It'd take a little longer to coax it into a useful orbit, but the same technology that would allow capture of a 500-tonner should be scalable to one 10X that size - and that would provide a helluva lot more raw material for in-space construction purposes.
PR is a MAJOR braintrust with some extremely big bucks behind it. I suspect they've thought this through a lot better than you or I have.
Regardless, we'll find out exactly what they're proposing to do on Tuesday.
dpilot mused:
To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.
to which ozmanjusri responded:
Earlier than that.
Try Philip K Dick or Harlan Ellison for size.
Earlier than that.
Try H. G. Wells for size.
cpu6502 revealed:,/p>
I have CFLs that date back to the 90s and still work, but newer Philips and GE CFLs that only last 6 months. The problem is in the bulb not the wires.....
My experience with Philips CFLs has been similarly dismal. OTOH, I've used plenty of Genuine Noname CFLs that lasted like the Energizer Bunny.
YMMV ... but I'll bet it won't.
fredrated demanded:
The French were using english words?
OP here. If you read Borenstein's AP article, you'd know that the French researchers chose to use English words, because, in the words of Jonathan Grainger, the lead researcher, "English is the international language of science."
Grainger did not express and opinion on whether that rationale makes sense to the baboons.
wisnoskij insisted:
Well I have never listened to a single opera. I respect the dedication to improving a skill and professionals who strive to perfect a skill. And I understand that to be a good singer you need to have control of your voice.
And yet you cite opera singing as somehow artistically superior to rock vocals.
Are you familiar with the logical error known as "appeal to authority"? Because you just indulged in it.
As for your contention that:
There is no comparison to the modern day rock and role singer (some smuck of the street who is willing to scream until he vomits blood) and a professionally trained opera singer who can actually control his voice.
I recommend you hunt up the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar, and listen closely to "Gethsemane". The guy singing it is Ian Gillian, the original lead singer of Deep Purple, and thus one of the originators (with Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin) of hard rock/heavy metal vocals. Hands down, it is the premiere interpretation of the part. His voice soars, pleads, agonizes, and, yes, at times screams. And the emotional impact is devastating. I defy you to criticize it - it is simply one of the best rock vocal performances ever recorded.
Better yet, listen to Murray Head's performance as Judas, singing "Superstar (I Only Want To Know)". Holy freakin' shit, Batman!
wisnoskij complained:
There is no comparison to the modern day rock and role singer (some smuck of the street who is willing to scream until he vomits blood) and a professionally trained opera singer who can actually control his voice.
Which is to say that you love opera, and rock music is not opera.
Well, duh.
I say! Jolly bad Phorm, Bobby!
My wife just received a come-on letter from AT&T that said she had been "choosen to receive" an "Android smartphone with NO CONTRACT and FREE SHIPPING!"
Of course, the fact that this Android smartphone she had been "chosen to receive" would cost her $129.99, plus tax, and that she'd have to maintain a credit balance in her AT&T account in order to actually USE this pretty dumb excuse for a smartphone AS a smartphone. (No data features for pay-as-you-go customers, naturally.)
Personally, I call that attempted fraud ...
I opined:
It's a lousy, no-win situation to find ourselves stuck in
Prompting Hatta to respond:
We're not stuck in it. Obama is choosing to prolong it. There's no reason to believe any occupying force can ever civilize Afghanistan. Why do you think Obama can succeed where the Soviets, the British, even Alexander the Great failed?
Actually, contrary to popular opinion, Alexander mostly succeeded.
He did so by marrying Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes, the most powerful of the Bactrian warlords, thus linking what is now Afghanistan to his empire by the promise that the heirs to his throne would be half-Bactrian. His marriage took place after the successful siege of the Sogdian Rock, the previously-impregnable fortress of the rebel Persian warlord Ariamazes, where Roxana and her mother had taken refuge. Essentially, his strategy was, "See? I can easily conquer even your strongest redoubts. Come, let us be brothers." He also settled colonists in what is now the Northwest Territories of Pakistan to provide the "civilizing" influence of Hellenistic culture, and their descendents still live there today as the Kalash tribe.
Although the area became independent again after Alexander's death, it was one of the few parts of his empire that never revolted against his rule during his lifetime (some of the disgruntled colonists - mostly disabled veterans of his army - did abandon their posts when rumors of his death swept the empire during his crossing of the Gedrosian desert, but they were Greeks and Macedonians, not Bactrians, and were punished as mutineers).
Alexander succeeded where the Brits and the Soviets failed, because he first demonstrated his overwhelming military superiority, and then employed his father's favorite diplomatic strategy of binding the most prominent regional strongman to him by marriage.
Obama doesn't have that option. Nonetheless, we have obligations to the residents of Kabul, if nothing else, who will be massacred by the Taliban, should they take over. Every educator, every healthworker, every policeman and Afghan Army member, every non-Sunni, will be slaughtered by the Taliban immediately after they gain control. And it is our presence that coaxed those folks into revealing themselves. I think we owe them a debt of protection for their courage - but we have to be smarter about it than we have been. It may even be necessary to offer them sanctuary in the West in order to meet our obligation to them - but, if we simply leave them to the mercy of the Taliban, we will have failed in a moral sense even more profoundly than the Soviets failed in a military one.
And I disagree that our failure was always inevitable. We COULD have built Afghanistan into an actual, functional nation-state (as opposed to the collection of semi-autonomous warlord fiefdoms which it has been since the Soviet invasion), if we had taken up the burden of nation-building to which our September 2001 invasion obligated us. That we did not is all the responsibility of Bush and Cheney. Again, Obama is merely stuck with trying to salvage as much as possible from the utter SNAFU of the previous administration.
explosivejared sighed:
It increasingly seems that no one is winning from this war.
prompting Hatta to respond:
Increasingly? It was obvious from the start that this was a fool's errand. Afghanistan isn't called the graveyard of empires for no reason.
Actually, it wasn't obvious at all. The U.S. invasion was welcomed by the majority of Afghans, who were pretty sick of the Taliban's reign of terror. The problem is that the Bush administration, instead of proceeding with the arduous and expensive task of nation-building that would have ensured the Taliban's permanent defeat, opted to turn its attention to invading Iraq. As a result, conditions for the average Afghan did not improve AT ALL under the American occupation, while Pakistan, our nominal ally in the "war on terror", sheltered, trained, equipped, and encouraged the Afghan Taliban to resume guerilla war against the American/NATO occupiers. As that conflict began generating more and more collateral damage, the tide of Afghan opinion turned more and more against the occupying troops, to the point that, today, our forces are nearly as hated as the Soviets were - and the Taliban are once again seen as saviors.
Obama inherited the Afghan quagmire from the Bush administration - which was responsible for causing it. Should he be persuaded immediately to withdraw all U.S. troops, not only would the Taliban instantly re-take control of Afghanistan, they would wreak horrific retribution against the most westernized sectors of Afghani society (i.e. - the most civilized and tolerant sectors), and plunge the country back into the 14th century hellhole it was before we invaded it in 2001.
And, not at all incidentally, make it once again a haven for international terrorism, a la September 2001.
It's a lousy, no-win situation to find ourselves stuck in, but the blame belongs with George W. Bush, not Barack Obama. As with the economy, Obama is merely the janitor, stuck with cleaning up after another one of the frat boy's "Wild Thing" parties.
Access the NY Times article without having to register with this link.
The article is, as is typical of the Times, full of detail about the story in question. Some salient points:
Spinrad, who's 71 now, was an enfant terrible of SF back in the 1960's. His novels "Bug Jack Barron" and "The Men in the Jungle" broke what at the time was new ground (the former for its use of vulgarity, the latter for its subject matter). He's been one of the most consistently interesting SF writers ever since, and I can't recommend his work highly enough.
BoRegardless warned:
Eliminating Bruce Schneier from the witness list means they really do NOT want any experts in front of the committee as that could bring up troubling "FACTS".
And this is surprising to you in what way?
This is a House committee, thus Republican-dominated, and Republicans have been pushing the FEAR button since ... well ... at least the Nixon administration. And especially so since 9/11 - which, you will recall, is what brought us the TSA in the first place.
Darrell Issa isn't interested in facts. He's interested in politics. People are becoming increasingly pissed at the thuggery of the TSA, so he's putting on hearings to show voters he's "concerned". He really isn't concerned, however. He just wants free publicity for the benefit of voters back home in Southern California. Like all members of the House, he's up for election again this year, and this circus is merely a mechanism to get his name and face in the news without him having to spend campaign funds. There will be no meaningful reforms as a result of his showboating, but the guy who made his fortune selling those damned obnoxious car alarms (that was Issa's own voice braying, "Stand away from the car!" on the "classic" Viper "warn away" system) that drive city dwellers to the brink of violence will wind up re-elected this November, and I guarantee you his campaign literature will trumpet how he "took on the TSA" over strip-searching grandmothers and babies.
Facts are beside the point.
Bruce F. Webster confided:
Wayne Holder and I did it 27 years ago for the Apple II. ..bruce..
I played that on the Atari ST. It was fun. You had to maintain and upgrade your ship, while building up your cash by trading, all the while gathering the colonists for a new world that your inheritance depended on you setting up (thus: Sundog: Frozen Legacy)
Great game.
I snarled:
These Belgian swine aren't legally permitted to charge children to BORROW these same books from the library and read them THEMSELVES, but they somehow have decided that they have the right to charge THE LIBRARY, if an adult reads them ALOUD to the same children?
In response to which kdmetter pled:
Belgian swine here. Please don't judge all my people by the actions of the lowest scum in the country ( SABAM ).
I called them "Belgian swine" merely to distinguish them from the American, British, Swedish, etc., etc. varieties.
Not all Belgians are swine - just as not all swine are Belgian - but THESE particular swine ARE Belgian.
(And PLEASE don't accuse me of waffling on this issue!)
Yes, it's crazy all right.
These Belgian swine aren't legally permitted to charge children to BORROW these same books from the library and read them THEMSELVES, but they somehow have decided that they have the right to charge THE LIBRARY, if an adult reads them ALOUD to the same children?
Apparently it takes a Belgian lintellectual property awyer to dumb down a village ...
And the first questions after they have successfully cloned a mammoth by the people will be, "How does it taste?"
And the answer will be, "Like chicken!"
artor recommended:
Straight from the horse's mouth: Don't Talk to Police.
The first half is a defense attorney, the second half is a cop. Both speakers make it very clear -- do not talk to police without a lawyer present. Some will try to screw you to boost their numbers, others will screw you by accident, but either way you get screwed. Cops have a very specific job to do, and that job does not involve looking out for your personal best interests. Talk to a lawyer instead - they are legally required to do what's best for you.
Mod this WAY up. The video in question is 48 minutes long, and wildly entertaining throughout. Also, eye-opening.
Thanks.
Note: the opinions expressed are my own - but most of the novels listed above won Hugos, and they all deserved them.
And, of course, this list could go on. And on. And ON ...
The other "father of space opera' whom nobody remembers - and I mean, at all - these days is Edmond Hamilton. Six of his books are available through Project Gutenberg. Really terrific stuff.
Also, E. E. Smith's original "Skylark of Space" novel was begun in 1915, and finally completed in 1920. It wasn't published until 1927, when it was serialized in three parts in Amazing Stories. That's pretty much the definitive beginning of space opera as a genre. The final Skylark novel - "Skylark Duquesne" - was serialized in four parts in Worlds of If in 1965. I remember very well what an amazing experience reading that serialization was for me, at the age of 12.
Smith actually died in late August, 1965, just as the "Skylark Duquesne" serialization was ending (If was actually distributed the month prior to its nominal month of publication). It was heartbreaking to read of his passing just as "Skylark Duquesne" - the capstone of a series that lasted nearly 40 years - reached publication.
causality expounded:
Voting is tougher. In the early days of the USA, only a small minority could vote. You had to be white, male, and you had to own land at a time when most people didn't. Obviously the requirement that voters be white was plain racism, though at the time the same racism meant only whites would be educated. The exclusion of women meant that what we now call "big government" proposals had less support automatically (this has been proven and I don't care how anyone feels about facts - women tend to look for security from an external source and the government is only too happy to offer it). The exclusion of anyone who didn't own land tended to mean the voters were educated and prosperous enough that they could devote time to being active in politics.
Oh and the fact that Senators were appointed by the states to represent the states meant you had one part of the legislature that didn't have to run campaigns, didn't have to worry about the way the wind was blowing, and could actually vote their conscience. Changing that was a bad idea. It was an important check against the soundbite-driven (well really headline-driven, back then) world we know today.
Actually, I've been reading The Gilded Age recently. In it, Twain and Warner keep politics in the age of buccaneer capital squarely in their sights. One of the supporting characters is Senator Dilworthy, who is up for re-election. He goes back to his home state of Missouri to campaign for reelection in the state legislature, and winds up losing in a landslide, when his widespread bribery of legislators is exposed.
It's fiction, not history, but it's indicative of at least one of the problems with having Senators elected by state legislatures, rather than by direct vote of the people - it's a lot easier to bribe a few dozen than an entire electorate.
Twain and Warner likewise rip the lid off of Washington politics of the time, when Dilworthy and his allies use bribery, coercion, and blackmail to ram through a bill to purchase 1200 acres of Tennessee land - ostensibly to benefit "the Negro", but actually for the benefit of a poor, but well-connected Missouri family, and the network of lobbyists, politicians, and infuence-makers who will "administer" the fund created by the measure.
The book is a lot of fun - and quite enlightening. Politics, it seems, is ever the same. The details change, the corruption remains consistent.
What I'd like to see is some kind of very tough civics test as a requirement for voting. It should be as openly and transparently administered as possible, so that anyone who wants to study and learn could pass it but very few who didn't care to study would stand a chance. In addition, anyone currently receiving some form of "entitlement" should not get to vote because what they're going to vote for is not difficult to guess and this situation is too exploitable and too dangerous for our long-term survival. The last thing I would change is that all campaigns be publically funded, each candidate gets a very generous amount, and any other "contributions" are treasonous bribery resulting in a death penalty for the candidate and 20 years in prison for the one "contributing" the money.
With something like that, we could have a nation again.
Mmm ... the civics test I could see. It would ensure an at least nominally informed electorate. Forbidding anyone who receives any kind of "entitlement" is a whole other issue. In fact, I'm really glad you put the term in quotes, because I don't think you've thought that restriction through.
And I mean I don't think you've thought it through at all.
For instance, your proposal - if it were implemented across the board - would mean that no one who receives Social Security or Medicare benefits could vote. Is that what you had in mind? Because it's senior citizens who have the most experience with the consequences of voting, as well as the leisure time necessa
Rakishi opined:
The Roman empire was based on slavery to it's very roots. They conquered to gain slaves to do work for them. When that cycle stopped is when Rome started to collapse.
All advanced (i.e. - "city-building") ancient civilizations were based on slavery (or serfdom, as in the Egyptian fellahin). Rome was not at all unique in that regard. However, Rome did not conquer to gain slaves, per se. In fact, the goals of Roman conquest evolved over time. Initially (which is to say, "during the early Republic"), the goals were to preserve territorial integrity, and to create buffer zones against potential invaders. Later, the goal changed to providing sources of tribute in the form of taxes. An occasional fresh source of slaves, to be sure, was a desirable and welcome bonus, but the primary attraction was the ongoing source of revenue new conquests created.
When the Roman Empire exceeded its maximum governable size, and was forced to divide itself in two, those new sources of revenue were taken out of the equation. The end came as Roman currency became progressively debased, causing rampant inflation, and a currency collapse that, in turn, made it increasingly difficult to finance the basis of Roman power - its standing armies. By the time Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the armies that allowed Rome to project power had all but disappeared. When Odoacer claimed the Western Principate in 476 - because no meaningful Roman military machine remained - Rome then altogether ceased to matter as a regional power.
First of all the actual article sucks - it contains no link to the actual published research, nor does it even bother to identify the journal in which the study was published. Christine Hsu, the article's author, contradicts herself on whether Austria or Italy has the lowest female BMI:
Of all the 17 European countries studied, women in Austria were had the lowest average body mass index, a measurement of weight compared to height, at 23.67, which was lower than the European average of 25. Italy had the lowest average BMI for young women at 21.40.
And, predictably, she makes NO mention of the actual survey's contents or methodology, beyond stating how many participants there were. So, we have no way of telling how those participants were selected, what questions they were asked, what the margin of error was calculated to be, and so on.
But the biggest fraud of all, is the conclusion that, based on one survey, European governments are somehow justified in dictating which models advertisers may or may not employ. That's not even a slippery slope - it's a precipice that makes the Matterhorn look like a Dutch tulip field.
Crappy reporting on execrable science. Nothing to see here ...
skids sneered:
Somehow I don't think the Republican Primary this year is a "major political event" to anyone but the pundits.
Wrong. It's very likely to determine who wins the Presidency - and control of the Legislature, as well.